Health vote haunts anti-abortion Dems

On a chilly January morning in Erie, Pa., members of the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony List stood outside Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper’s office to thank her for opposing a health care bill that didn’t include stringent abortion restrictions.

Ten months later, Dahlkemper and other anti-abortion Democrats are at risk of becoming an endangered species in the House.

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She and others eventually signed on to the health reform law, endorsing an executive order that barred federal funding of abortions. But SBA List and other anti-abortion groups opposed the executive order, contending it was too weak.

Now, SBA List is engaged in a multimillion-dollar attack on its former allies, replete with bus tours and billboards alleging that members “voted for taxpayer-funded abortion.” The group invested $1.5 million in its “Votes Have Consequences” bus tour in August, targeting anti-abortion Democrats who supported health reform. Just last week, SBA List spent $55,000 on 32 billboards dotting the districts of three vulnerable Democrats.

On the other hand, Democrats for Life of America, the group most fiercely devoted to defending anti-abortion Democrats, has been essentially inactive this election cycle. Its political action committee brought in $2,431 and spent a paltry $308, according to Federal Election Commission filings. DFLA has made no contributions to federal candidates.

That Dahlkemper finds herself in a razor-thin race and on the defensive over her abortion rights stance is particularly galling for the freshman congresswoman.

“It’s been extremely frustrating at times,” Dahlkemper told POLITICO. “All along, I have donated. I have marched. I have been an unmarried pregnant woman who chose life. I have lived this. Now I’m 52, and in the last six months, all of a sudden, people are questioning who I am.”

If the previous decade saw the rise of the anti-abortion Democrats, the next few years could well be their demise. Abortion rights opponents triumphed in socially conservative and traditionally Republican districts, helping solidify Democratic control of Congress.

In the 43 districts held by Democrats with mixed or complete anti-abortion voting records, as scored by the National Right to Life Committee, the outlook is bleak: four lean Republican, 12 are tossups and nine lean just slightly Democratic, according to The Cook Political Report.

Just 12 anti-abortion Democrats’ seats are considered safe.

“We’re hoping to hold our members, but I’m afraid we may lose some,” said Kristen Day, executive director of DFLA. “It’s partly the political climate and then the health care bill definitely being used against these members.”

Many of the anti-abortion Democrats are campaigning in an uneasy no-man’s land: out of line with the party platform but with little support from the country’s most influential anti-abortion groups.

They are newer members in districts that Democrats barely held in 2008 and that are already likely to flip without the barrage of anti-abortion attacks under anti-incumbent sentiment.